Employee who killed couple sentenced to life

BURLINGAME

Published 4:00 am, Friday, December 19, 2008

A Burlingame man was sentenced Thursday to life in prison without the possibility of parole for killing a Millbrae couple who employed him for more than two decades as a property manager.

Joseph Cua, 54, killed Fernand Wagner and his wife, Suzanne, because he feared they were about to discover that he had been embezzling from them for years, authorities said.

Cua was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder in the slayings June 13, 2006, of Fernand Wagner, 78, an investor and former restaurateur, and Suzanne Wagner, 68, who worked part time as a hairdresser.

After a 16-day trial, a San Mateo County Superior Court jury also convicted Cua of the special circumstance of committing multiple murder. At a hearing Thursday, Judge Norman Gatzert ordered Cua to spend the rest of his life in prison.

The couple were found beaten and slashed inside their hillside home on Lomita Avenue. The killer had arranged the scene to make it look as though there had been a robbery and sexual assault, prosecutors said.

The defense maintained that an unknown intruder had killed the Wagners and left DNA at the scene.

Cua had been skimming money from rent checks for properties that the Wagners owned on the Peninsula and in San Jose, authorities said. He used the money to buy such luxury items as a boat and a sport utility vehicle and to support both a family in Riverside and a girlfriend in the Bay Area.

A bloodstain on Suzanne Wagner's panties found at the crime scene matched Cua's DNA, as did blood found in the Wagners' car. The defense said other DNA from an unidentified person pointed to the actual killer.